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London Underground to Gain Full Mobile Phone Coverage by 2024

Reason077 said:
The NYC Subway lines are all what we'd call in London "Subsurface lines". They run just below street level, in fairly large tunnels. Some of London's lines are like this too, and we have AC on those.

But about 2/3 of the Tube network is what are called "deep tube" lines. These are much deeper below the ground (up to 50 meters in places) and in narrow, bored tunnels that leave very little clearance between the trains and the tunnel walls. It's on these lines that air conditioning is very difficult to install.
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And on that note about the Central Line, with all that clay around it, it's no wonder the line was colored red.
www.wired.co.uk

Why is London's Central line so hot? Science has the answer

The London Underground is hot. But nowhere is hotter than the Central line, which is routinely so hot that it exceeds the EU limit at which it is legal to transport cows, sheep and pigs
www.wired.co.uk www.wired.co.uk
 
Reason077 said:
Finally, more than 30% of the world's population drives on the left. Including 3 of the 5 largest countries in the world!
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Most populous. None of the largest countries in the world drive on the left [edit: except in Hong Kong, China...]
 
hagar said:
Wait? there's no reception on some lines in the London Underground? How is that possible in 2021? Seems hard to believe.

Brussels underground, while smaller, has 3G coverage for probably over a decade now, and they rapidly introduced 4G when it became available as well. There’s also free WiFi in the stations.
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Same in Mexico City’s metro, how London didn’t have this is a bit surprising
 
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Lozza013 said:
Today was 50 years since it started construction. It opened in the early 80s
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Ah ok. Very modern compared to the London Underground. Our infrastructure is so old, any update is incredibly time consuming (and worsened by our low productivity and the mountain of paperwork required…). Joy of joys!
 
amaze1499 said:
Lucky Londoners. Not off the grid for 2 mins between stations.
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A journey on a tube can last even one hour or more, and being offline for two minutes every two minutes can be a nuisance. I applaude this improvement.
 
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sflagel said:
The infrastructure is old because your keep it old! For some reason, you think that old = quaint. Anywhere else in the world, infrastructure is upgraded.
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This is hardly worth a response, but actually I'd argue for all its faults, there are few metro systems better than London's when compared to other massive cities. Sure, there are medium sized newly built cities like Singapore, that might have better systems (I've never been), but they are just not comparable. For instance, the new £15bn line opening next year (hopefully) in London is about half the length of the entire Singapore metro system - and will of course have things like air-con and network coverage.

The only real comparison to London is New York, and while there are definitely pluses and minuses for both, on balance I'd say that London is the cleaner and better run.

Upgrading existing lines would be an enormous challenge, and would require an absurd amount of investment. Engineers would have to contend with hundreds of years of foundations, sewers, and other quirks (even the post-office for instance used to have a tunnel for delivering mail across the city), and all of this would have to be factored in.
 
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hagar said:
Wait? there's no reception on some lines in the London Underground? How is that possible in 2021? Seems hard to believe.

Brussels underground, while smaller, has 3G coverage for probably over a decade now, and they rapidly introduced 4G when it became available as well. There’s also free WiFi in the stations.
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The escalator on Holborn station gives a hint at just how deep some London Underground stations are. Absolutely no way signals will penetrate through that much rock. You'd have to set up a mobile network with transmitters underground and within tube lines to hold network coverage. For now though, there's extensive Wifi coverage in most Underground stations that are actually under ground, so the gap is in accessing the Internet between stations on portions under ground.

As a Northerner though, the bigger question for me is how we might improve signal coverage on trains between stations over ground across the UK.
 
MacRumors said:


London Underground passengers will be able to get mobile coverage across the rail network by the end of 2024, it has been announced.

transport-for-london.jpg

In a press release, Transport for London (TfL) said the capital's Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road and Bank stations would be among the first fully connected stations by the end of the year, followed by Tottenham Court Road, Euston, and Camden Town by the end of 2022.

Mobile reception was introduced on the eastern half of the Jubilee line in March last year. TfL says the additional infrastructure will support 5G as well as 4G, but that it will be the responsibility of mobile operators to offer support for the fastest network speeds.

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, who was re-elected last month, said in a statement:
TfL is partnering with BAI Communications (BAI), a global provider of 4G and 5G connected infrastructure, to plug so-called coverage "not-spots" in the underground network. The over 1,242 miles of fibre cabling installed in London Underground tunnels will also benefit above-ground coverage for buildings and other infrastructure by allowing more mobile transmitters to be installed.

Article Link: London Underground to Gain Full Mobile Phone Coverage by 2024
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Utter waste of time. It’s 4G coverage on the stations - not whilst train is moving throughout the tunnels and we’ve already got WiFi.
 
desslr said:
Utter waste of time. It’s 4G coverage on the stations - not whilst train is moving throughout the tunnels and we’ve already got WiFi.
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Wrong. It's both the stations and underground tunnels. They've already done it on half of the Jubilee line and it works perfectly while the train is moving. This video explains how it works:
 
How much of a phone call can you make within 2 minutes? While waiting on the platform, and usually the stations get packed anyway,no one will be able to hear.
 
I don’t really care but would you actually be able to hear/be heard by the person you’re speaking to? The underground is ****ing loud.
 
c:v said:
I don’t really care but would you actually be able to hear/be heard by the person you’re speaking to? The underground is ****ing loud.
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This is indeed a non-issue. People also call on the street, in trains and in the subway stations.

And most people do stuff on their screen anyways.
 
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